revolutionary action movement (ram) - Michael Schwartz Library

37
communists were viewed as bourgeois, narrow,
reactionary tendencies and
agruments against radical
black nationalist working class organizing were
raised . The principle objection was that nationalism and independent black
organizing divided the working class and alienated white workers .
In the early 1930's a black mass "Don't Buy, Where You Can't Work"
campaign started in Chicago . Soon it spread to Detroit, Cleveland, Los
Angeles, Baltimore, Maryland, Washington, D .C . and Harlem, New York . 25
In the spring of 1933, Sufi Abdul Hamid began organizing this movement in
Harlem . Garveyites joined Sufi and they
organized mass rallies and
picket-
ing of stores in Harlem on 135th Street .
During the campaign, anti-white
and anti-Jewish sentiments came from the
demonstrators and
the Communist
Party, fearing the
rise of another black
nationalist movement they did
not
control, labeled Sufi a 'Harlem Hitler .'
To counter the black nationalist movement, the CP initiated demonstrations
and a boycott of a large Harlem cafeteria .
The campaign was fully
integrated and had the support of the CIO and Adam Clayton Powell . 26
In 1935, the Soviet leadership, which had organizational ties with the
CPUSA, fearing the rise of fascism in Europe, instructed the national leadership
of the CPUSA to
subordinate its struggle to build an alliance with
the liberal bourgeoisie to build a popular front against fascism . All Black
nationalist elements in party organizing was played down or suppressed . The
Party leadership insisted that all Party meetings be integrated including
ones in Uptown Harlem . 27 The Alabama Sharecroppers Union was disbanded and
25 Mark Naison, "The Southern Tenants Farmers Union and the CIO," Radical
America, Vol . 2, (September/October 1968), p . 31 .
261bid ., pp . 140-141 .
27 Mark E . Naison, "The Communist Party in Harlem in the Early Depression
Years ." Radical History Review, 3 (1976), pp . 68-95 .